Welcome to the Rotary Club of Moraga,
where we have been serving the
community of Moraga, and the world, since 1967. Moraga Rotary now meets at
Moraga Country Club, in the St. Andrews Lounge on the second floor, on the first, third and fourth Tuesday at 12:00 Noon, and at 6:00 PM for
dinner on the second Tuesday of the month.

Greetings from the President:

I am pleased to have been asked to serve as the
President of the Rotary Club of Moraga for the 2018-19 year as the club enters
its 52nd year of service to the Moraga community. I have continually been
amazed about what a relatively small club of almost 40 members has been able to
accomplish, and I hope we can continue to make a positive contribution to our
local community and those less fortunate than us around the world.

To recap some of the activities Moraga Rotary
supports on a yearly basis, we support local Moraga school children with a gift
of weekly kids' Time and National Geographic magazines as an educational
supplement to all the 3rd,4th and 5th graders at all the schools in town. We
also provide financial and other support to local students who participate in
our 14 Moraga Rotary Odyssey of the Mind teams, that compete locally and
nationally, and we have been proud to see our sponsored teams do exceptionally
well in Regional, National and World competitions, often bringing home awards.

We provide two partial college scholarships to
Campolindo High School graduates, one in the name of our past president Mary
Elena Dochterman. We provide a scholarship to a worthy St. Mary’s student each
year, and we have a St. Mary’s scholarship endowment worth over $103,000 which
serves as the source of our scholarship funds annually. We also fund two
scholarships each year to Rotary’s Camp Royal Leadership Camp for high school
students in their junior year.

We proudly sponsor the Interact Club at Campolindo
High School, like a mini-Rotary Club for high school, which is comprised of
students eager to help those in need and volunteer to better their community.

In honor of our 50th Anniversary in 2017, we raised
and gave to the Town of Moraga over $350,000 to construct an "All-Access"
playground at the Commons Park in Moraga. This all-inclusive playground is
designed so that children with special needs can play side-by-side with kids
without any disabilities. We will have a few refinements to add to the
playground this year. This project was huge for a small club, but one that has
tremendous community support, and one we took on with great enthusiasm and
pride.

Our major international project this year will be to
support the establishment of an orphanage and school in Sierra Leone to fill
the needs of some 30+ children who became orphans due to the Ebola crisis that
took their parents’ lives. We have local volunteers designing the facility and
boots on the ground to manage the construction and operation of this $300,000
project. Check out our International Services page for more details.

Our second international focus will
continue to be in finally eliminating polio from the Earth. When Rotary
International started this Polio Plus project 33 years ago, it was our own
member. Cliff Dochterman, who along with just three others, were the moving
force in taking on a monumental worldwide project. At that time in 1985, there
were 350,000 cases of polio annually in dozens of countries. Through Rotary’s
efforts, we have helped eliminate 99% of the worldwide cases and only two
countries still have a handful of polio cases per year, which Rotary will target
to finally fully eradicate the disease hopefully in 2019. Our club will
continue to donate vaccines this year to keep the effort up, and to finally
state that the scourge of polio has been eliminated.

Our club will continue to step up when worldwide
emergencies occur, last year donating $4,000 to the North Bay Wildfire relief
funds, plus one ShelterBox with living supplies for 10 people to Puerto Rico for
hurricane relief. We are raising funds now for the northern California
wildfires which ravaged communities in 2018.

To accomplish all of these projects, we organize
several fundraisers in addition to the donations from individuals in our club.
We do a pair of community e-Waste recycling and document shredding events each
year at the Moraga Shopping Center. We host the very popular Nite at the
Races dinner and auction each March at the Holy Trinity Banquet Hall on School
Street, which will next be held March 9, 2019.

Moraga Rotary is made up of men and women of different
ages, professions and talents, all of whom are dedicated to making a difference
in their community and the world. We also have 8 businesses that are business
members, supporting the community in additional ways. There are over 1.2
million Rotarians all over the world and all attest to the motto “Service Above
Self.”

We meet Tuesdays at the Moraga Country Club, 1600 St.
Andrews Drive, in the St. Andrews Lounge on the second floor, where we have
fellowship and interesting speakers. Aside from the second Tuesday each month
which is a 6:00 PM dinner meeting, we meet at 12 noon for lunch. If you are
interested in knowing more about Rotary, come be our guest for lunch or dinner.